Homesick (1990) and So Long (1993), her immensely popular short story collections, established Lucia Berlin as the Sister of Mercy of contemporary fiction. In Where I Live Now, Berlin once again contemplates the human condition with a compassionate understanding. Berlin's vision is sometimes remorseful, sometimes resigned, always courageous and unmisgiving.The elusive nature of happiness is a compelling theme here: the survivors in these stories -- many of them society's marginal or excluded people, fighting alcohol or drug addiction, bearing emotional scars -- recognize it all too well. They mourn the lost dreams of youth, the roads not taken. They suffer the damage life inflicts: the ache of loneliness, the pain of separation, the fear of death.

Lucia Berlin (1936-2004) worked brilliantly but sporadically throughout the 1960s, '70s and '80s. Her stories are culled from her early childhood in various Western mining towns; her glamorous teenage years in Santiago, Chile; three failed marriages; a lifelong problem with alcoholism; her years spent in Berkeley, New Mexico, and Mexico City; and the various jobs she later held to support her writing and her four sons, including as a high-school teacher, a switchboard operator, a physician's assistant, and a cleaning woman.